Amtrak, 30th Street Station

Superior Scaffold is proud to be providing scaffolding support for Amtrak’s renovation of their 30th St. Station in downtown Philadelphia. The historic building that opened in 1933 will get a much needed facelift. It’s an incredible looking structure and can you just imagine what it’s going to be like when it’s finished? Amtrak wants to make the neoclassical 30th Street Station a more welcoming gateway to West Philadelphia and Center City. The 30th Street Station handles 120 Amtrak trains, 960 SEPTA trains, and 26 NJ Transit trains each weekday. More than four million Amtrak passengers went through the station last year. Superior’s first order of business was to erect canopies and sidewalk protection around the entire building – and that’s a good sized building. The station is a hustling, bustling metropolis all of its own with cars, buses, and lots of people all the time. Those are just some of the challenges faced when erecting scaffolding around a busy building like this. For that reason, most of the work was done at night as pedestrian and vehicle traffic was diminished. All of 30th Street Station is hollow underneath so Amtrak required Superior to build canopies on top of barriers to distribute weight load. This was done so scaffolding can be installed on top of the canopy to do facade restoration. Amtrak even specified the type and color of paint, a beautiful soft green. Customizing the look and color of a canopy is an option that many of our clients choose. Superior had to construct overhead protection at different elevations for buses, cars and pedestrians. This is going to be an 8 – 10 year project. These structures are just the first phase in an extensive renovation. They have to be strong enough to support additional scaffolding when they start renovating the facade of the building. For more detailed information on the job read our blog